City of Crescent Websites. by Susan Simkins

Susan was excited to start one of her first real world projects for the city of Crescent, Oklahoma. The project involved creating a website for the Chamber of Commerce, but the town was in need of a website for the city as well, so she took on the challenge of doing both websites and logos for the government and Chamber. She got to travel to Crescent on several occasions and meet with the City Manager and Mayor in the town hall.

Crescent has big dreams for its future. They dream of increased tourism and revitalization, a fun downtown offering unique shops and galleries, a restaurant that can offer live music, and a unique, eclectic vibe while still retaining that feeling of being a town where everyone knows your name. One of the biggest challenges was finding a compromise between these dreams and where the town is now, and to create an image of the town that could represent them both now and in their possible future.

For the Chamber, Susan created a logo that combined fun, eccentric colors with a traditional serif typeface to feel modern but still traditional. It is composed of four crescent moons brought together in an abstract representation of the fields of canola flowers that surround Crescent. She also created a tagline to go with the logo and represent the spirit of Crescent: “Where Character Meets Country.”

For the City logo, the client wanted something that was “crescenty” but not too crescenty. Susan created a logo with four interlocking crescent moons representing the four “C’s” of Crescent: the City, Community, Chamber, and Character, all working together to govern Crescent. She used warm blues, greens and greys and all lowercase letters to make it feel warm and friendly.

The client wanted a custom template for the websites to make the sites feel cohesive, but still retain their own individual feel and branding. The sites were built in WordPress to give the client the ability to maintain and update the sites themselves. There was not much content given for the sites, so they focus on strong imagery of the city.